It took another five months. But he finally found one, a person who had a hereditary Fae curse.
He would be happy, but his patient was not someone who was otherwise healthy, who could live their life with some major issue like blindness or missing a limb.
She was from a family who was known for how hearty they were, and her issue didn’t show up until she was 6, she got sick and then just never got better.
They were well connected and they hid her condition, but they knew there was a limit, another year, another month, another day, they just didn’t know.
When they found out through their spies that Harlan was looking for people who were cursed from birth, they contacted him and he broke a handful of treaties to get her out.
Currently she was sleeping, she did that more and more every day since he met her.
There were white curtains connected to soulsmithed gems all around the room to keep the air completely clean, to remove dirt, and Harlan didn’t even leave the lab for fear of bringing something back.
“You’re tired, take a rest. You aren’t being helpful if you can’t think.”
“I don’t know how long she has left. I can’t.”
“Please, do it for her, she needs you at your best, not like you are now. You can go a week easy even with how hard you’ve been going with just 8 hours.”
“No. I just need to keep going, I’ll drink another anti-sleep elixir.”
“Alright.”
For all of the times he had done it to others, he never expected to be hit with a classic trick of his.
Dawn slowly, subtly, cast a sleeping air spell.
After 15 minutes, Harlan finally couldn’t resist anymore.
When he woke up, his first action was to check the vitals of the girl, aged 8.
Then he began poking her soul, attempting to see which parts would give.
He knew which parts were from the curse, but he didn’t understand in the slightest how it effected her.
Everything he knew about souls came from testing, and there were a lot of things that he found out only after something went wrong. Here, the girl was so weak that anything going wrong would be the end, and that limited him far too much to actually get any progress.
“Mister Harlan… did you find anything yet?”
“I’m still working on it, but don’t worry, I’m sure I can figure this out. I’ve always saved people, this is a matter of time.”
“Can you show me the lights again?”
“Of course.”
She watched the orbs of color, like a swarm of fireflies.
“I’ve met a lot of doctors. You are young.”
“I know. So are you.”
“How long do I have to live?”
“90 to 100 years, a full lifespan.”
“I heard the others talking, they thought I was sleeping. They said I would be lucky to be 10.”
“They are wrong, they are fools who could’ve… I didn’t see you before just a few weeks ago. They don’t do what I do. You are going to live.”
“What is one more child from Reino?”
“What?”
“How many children just like me died at the hands of the golems you made? How many will you kill yourself, just like that Fomorian boy?”
Harlan jolted awake, 4 hours of sleep.
He picked up his amulet, and hoped that he wouldn’t get blown off again.
Xol had given him his contact, but never once picked up, he always had something better to do.
So he did the best thing that he could, he called Marigold.
“Harlan, it has been three weeks. How has your work been going?”
“You know, violating treaties to help people, looking at the soul of a girl who…”
His jovial facade cracked, and so did his voice.
“I need help, Xol, do you think he could come here? I’d owe him a hundred favors, anything he wants from me. I just need some help.”
“Harlan. Why don’t you tell me a little about this. Maybe I can help? Xol is so often busy doing… other things.”
“I finally found someone willing to let me see their soul, the damage caused by a Fae boon that has broken and its effects have been reversed. She is dying, her body can’t fight off the smallest of infections without light magic. She hasn’t been outside in years. I… I don’t know what to do… it isn’t like the intentional curses that I’ve seen, it doesn't make sense.”
“I’ll ask him.”
6 hours later, Xol appeared and Harlan began to explain his procedure on keeping out dirt.
“Boy. I’ve worked in sterile environments. Why don’t we start by testing her blood. From her appearance and your description, I believe I have some idea of what is wrong with her.”
“Really? That is great, I’m so happy to hear that.”
Xol had a sealed silver box that contained much of his lab equipment, though it was nothing like what Harlan knew as lab equipment.
No rune stabilizers, no mana gatherers, no mortars and pestles, and no liquifiers or cauldrons.
The only enchantments he could see were durability, preventing rust or other wear and tear.
Xol cast a spell that cleaned the area before he drew blood using a syringe, then he put it between two pieces of glass and put it under a telescope, but meant for looking down instead of up.
“What is that?”
“Back home, we would’ve called this a microscope. Do you know about germ theory? I bet you don’t, not entirely. You people wield so much power, but sometimes it is nothing but a cudgel. No need to understand red and white blood cells, bacteria, viruses. Just cast another spell, don’t think about the underlying science that makes you all tick. Your spell to clean the area makes it spotless, not a single bit of dirt or grime or dust, but it is filthy.”
Harlan waited over an hour, through many, many speeches from Xol.
He didn’t feel like he was talking down to Harlan, despite his tone, he considered this to be the normal way to be spoken to. And instead of ignoring him or asking a hundred questions, something that Xol very much did not have the patience for, Harlan recorded every single word said to him.
Finally he got up from his seat and started to pack away his equipment.
“Now, you may ask questions.”
“Were you a doctor back home?”
“No, but we had the-”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Xol realized that to explain anything, he would need to explain three other things, so he kept it simple.
“Imagine you could open a book, and it was connected to a constantly growing library that contained records of nearly all of human history, of science and medicine, it went down to people's personal lives that they would write down hoping others would read it. State slavery was implemented when I was 22 years old, and before that, I would spend hours and hours every day just reading, watching, learning every useless little thing that I could.”
Harlan found it a wondrous idea, but ultimately, he put it in the back of his mind.
“What that girl has is a curse that is killing her white and red blood cells.”
“But her blood is the same red as anyone else’s?”
He sighed.
“I’m going to vastly oversimplify this. Our blood, generally speaking, is made of red and white cells. Red cells carry oxygen, white fight infection, disease, things like that. They exist on a level so small, that you cannot see them without special equipment like mine, or with spells. What she has, is what we would’ve called an autoimmune disease, her body is attacking itself and killing the cells, so it cannot fight off the other things that are killing her.
Her body is wrong, and the curse seems to be preventing the soul from solving the wrong body
You people have encountered things like this, but when nothing works, you write it off as a curse, unless they are a noble, then you try and fail to understand why someone needs to maintain light magic treatments. But it works, so you keep being ignorant.”
“Do you have a spell to replenish these white cells?”
“No. I’ve never had a need to do so, and magic that creates on such a small scale is dangerous and unpredictable compared to magic that destroys on that scale, hence I will give you my cleaning spell.
I don’t have a solution for you, but I will leave you a spare microscope. If you can replenish her white cells, then that is enough for her to be healthy, so that you don’t need to worry about her dying anytime you do anything to her. I’ve spent enough time here. Now, payment.”
Harlan was ready to pay nearly anything at the moment.
“Once you’ve been married for 90 years, you start to run out of ideas, or even variants of ideas for romantic dates. I need suggestions.”
Harlan explained what he did with Ava on new year’s, then what he planned to do for her birthday.
“This will suffice, I will take my leave now. Oh, and sterilize the needle every time you use it, the plates too.”
He really wanted to just have Harlan owe him favors, but he thought his wife might not be happy with that. Even just asking for this instead of the favors was, in and of itself, something she would find romantic.
Besides, he knew there would be many more times in the future to ask for favors, Harlan couldn’t got a month without doing something stupid, let alone the next year.
It took a month, the issue was that Xol was right, it was dangerous, and the spell was unstable.
So Harlan did something he already knew how to do, he went bigger.
When he made Balor’s body, quite a lot happened once Balor’s soul was inside of it, nerves and veins were carved out or rearranged under his skin, and Harlan didn’t do any of that.
The body knew what it was supposed to do, in theory.
So what Harlan did wasn’t to generate new cells, rather, he told the body to make more cells.
He couldn’t test such a spell on her, so he made a clone of her, and then a clone of her soul.
It didn’t contain her memories and it was very fragile, but it was broken in the same way.
He realized that he didn’t actually need her, or likely any more than a single subject for nearly anything anymore.
He thought about whether he would even bother if instead of a little girl, it was a crotchety old man dying in front of him.
She was walking outside for the first time in far too long, her skin wasn’t nearly so pale either now that she could handle the sunlight.
“So, I’m healed, right?”
He thought back to the Ghoul who wanted to be fixed, even if it cost him his life.
Kind lies rather than harsh truth.
“Almost. I just want to make sure that you stay healthy.”
“What is this?”
“A pinecone.”
“And this?”
“A pine needle.”
“This?”
“That is a frog.”
Harlan started to think, is this how people seem to Xol when they ask him questions? Was everyone just an ignorant child? The difference for Harlan was that he was feeling wonderful from the high of giving her the chance to go out and ask these questions.
“Can I see my parents now?”
“I would like to run a few more tests, but I told them that you are getting better, and they can’t wait to see you.”
He hadn’t said a thing to them other than he found a way to keep her stable.
His worry was that once they found out that she could just have the spell applied every few weeks, and it wasn’t even soul magic, that they would take her away. He still needed her so he could make the cloned souls, much like Dagda being unable to make more souls like himself, a soul could be copied only from its source.
They were having a full meal, Harlan even brought in dessert. She could hold down her food now even if it wasn’t thin broth soups and bread, so he wanted something special for her.
Then he heard a knock on the door.
He told her to keep eating while he went to see who it was.
“We are from the Reinoan embassy here at the academy. It has come to our attention that you have a citizen of Reino, and you are subjecting her to soulmagic experiments.”
“Prove it.”
They tried to force their way in, but Harlan instead forced his way out.
“It is the right of a mage, especially on academy grounds, to maintain secrecy on all projects.”
“If you have nothing to hide, then there shouldn’t be any issue with us quickly verifying that you are alone inside of here.”
“Come back here with a warrant from your leader, and the headmaster. Then I will at least consider letting you inside. If your case is ironclad, then you have no reason to not get these things.”
“Is it really worth all the effort? Why not just let us inside for 5 minutes. We don’t want to be here any more than you want us here. I’m told you are a keeper of the peace, as one to another, why not just-””
“Oh, so friendly. Now, this is the part where an idiot would agree, since there is nothing to hide after all.
But when someone is trying to find charges against someone, even if they can’t get the ones they want, they can surely find something to trump up using circumstantial evidence.”
Harlan stopped smiling.
“I’ve been kind, all things considered, since you interrupted my meal and are now trying to find a way to get inside my lab where you can see my work. If you do not leave now, I will consider this trespassing, and I will call the academy staff to remove you. Peacekeeper, what a joke.”
Harlan went inside and closed the door before he called the academy to make sure that they left.
“Who was it?”
“Oh, nobody, just someone checking up on me, making sure I didn’t need anything.”
“Alright.”
Harlan began working on her in the morning.
She was healthy and it wasn’t unpleasant for her, as unlike messing with a functional pact, interfering with a broken boon meant that he was turning it back on, slowly but surely.
His fear faded away after the first day when he realized that whatever the Fae did, it was intended to be entirely benign, instead of detonating, whenever he broke something, the boon realized what had happened and reconstructed itself.
It was still doing it wrong, but now that he knew it wouldn’t have a negative impact on her, he could do just about anything he wanted to, if it worked, the boon just implemented the fix, if it didn’t work, it was healed to its original state.
It was some of the easiest soulmagic he had ever done, he could go for hours and hours, the only issue was his own endurance. But without a time limit on her dying in her sleep, he didn’t mind getting some of his own.
A week passed, and he figured that today would be the last day, her condition wouldn’t worsen anymore, he just wanted to make sure that she got the same ability as her parents and never got sick again.
Another knock on the door.
He knew those minds, so he put her to sleep and then under as many spells as he could to hide her.
“I take it you received a warrant?”
“Two, one from Her Holiness, Grand Saint Fragile Peace, and one from Headmaster Hirum Selvis.
You may put away anything which could be understood by us, but we are allowed to check for signs of life other than you inside. If something has been covered, we may request to see under it, and academy staff will verify that it is not a person. The details are all written here, but you have 10 minutes to put up veils or mundane coverings on your work.”
“There is no need for that. Please, come inside.”
They looked under covers and in every nook and cranny, but they couldn’t find her, because she wasn’t physically there.
They finally came upon the cube, 4x4 of equal parts stone, fire, air, water, light, and dark steel.
“This thing, open it.”
“It doesn't open. Use a seismic spell if you would like.”
Both the Reinoans and the academy staff confirmed that it was solid on the inside.
Marigold hadn’t made a hair clip for Zella, she made two. Yet Harlan kept one and had been working on its secrets since the day he got his hands on it.
He couldn’t make a small world like what Marigold had done. But a 6x3 room to hide a single person?
That functioned, at least for a few hours before it burned up? That he could do.
He had felt bad about stealing it, but he had a dream where it seemed like a good idea, so he did it anyway.
Future sight was something rarely controlled, so Harlan chose to see the signs in his dreams whether they were really there or not.
They left dissatisfied, but they did leave, and if they wanted to look again, they would need both new warrants, and a far stronger case to get them.
Harlan turned off the dimensional cube and out came the girl, but the cube itself fell apart, losing half of its mass to the other side of wherever it really stored things.